


Songbook

by arcanemoody



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: 78rpms, Bickering, Developing Relationship, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Episode: s05e07 Ace Chemicals, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 05, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21958804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanemoody/pseuds/arcanemoody
Summary: Written as part of the Gotham Secret Santa 2019.Whatever Ed needed, he could have. Oswald wasn’t sure how he could make that any clearer.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Comments: 7
Kudos: 91





	Songbook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ckatattack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckatattack/gifts).



Oswald sorted bolts at his ally’s behest. He helped push the tables together in the library, cleared the combined space so that his partner could work on the engine of the submarine while maintaining a clear view of each set of plans. All while humming to himself and emptying boxes of scrap on the side table designated for his work; filing bolts, screws, and other detritus into separate piles and compartments for easy retrieval.  
  
Contrary to the accusations Edward liked to throw at him, he hadn’t intended for his old friend and enemy to be doing the majority of the work – conceptualizing, working from schematics, redesigning schematics. Oswald himself found none of this intuitive, and had hoped by making himself scarce, Ed’s progress could continue uninterrupted. His 10th-grade shop teacher had said once, with a screwdriver in his hand that, Oswald Cobblepot was essentially a gremlin. Except "half the size and twice as ugly." He couldn’t even wire a lamp from a kit; couldn’t sand or carve the blocks used to make a simple standing clock. And his lack of technical acumen was matched only by his inability to commit to physical labor. A submarine was seriously outside his expertise. Seeing to their cargo and procuring the niceties and basic needs his colleague eschewed in favor of managing his labor was much more his speed.  
  
He checked on (and added to) their pile of treasure. He made sure Ed had decent food and untainted water. He sorted bolts. He worked very, very hard to tamp down any indignity he felt in each task.

“Are you humming Dinah Shore?”

It took a moment for him to realize that Ed was addressing him.  
  
“What?”

“That song. What are you humming?”

Oswald shook his head, slightly dazed.  
  
“I-I don’t know. It’s just something I remembered… maybe from one of my mother’s records? 'Put it in a box, tie it with a ribbon—’

“'…would surely fill the deep blue sea,'” Ed finished in his gentle tenor. “That’s Dinah Shore.”

“Is it?” Oswald shrugged. “Huh. Well, if you’re that desperate for me to not sing it, I think I must have the actual record somewhere.”  
  
Ed’s brow furrowed.

“78RPM? Red label? Columbia logo?”

“I think so.”

“That‘s _my_ record, Oswald!” he shouted, taking a large step forward.

His brain froze up in the way it tended to do nowadays any time Ed leveled an accusation at him, grappling with whether it was warranted and whether the vehemence required a match in tone.  
  
This did not. He took a deep breath.

“Technically speaking, it’s my record. I bought it.”

“Yeah, along with the rest of my records, my books and my clothes,” Ed shot back.  
  
“Well, excuse me for wanting you to feel at home when you got out of Arkham!”

The lot at the police auction had been purchased through an intermediary – the same intermediary that made a hefty donation to the policemen’s union under the name of the Van Dahl living trust. Oswald had known that if the GCPD had felt free enough to use his name to trap Edward into a confession, they would probably be vindictive enough to refuse his name on a purchase order. 

"And anyway, since you left them all at the manor, I’d say that still makes them mine.”

“Technically speaking,” he replied, mimicking Oswald’s earlier tone. “I didn’t leave.”  
  
“You certainly weren’t living there when I got back!” The air in the house had been stale the day he and Fries forced the front door open. Only the kitchen had maintained its normal, spotless, lived-in atmosphere, due to Olga’s continued employment, salary operating on an automatic deposit. The rest had fallen into a cluttered disrepair that illustrated the descent of Riddler’s madness.

“I wasn’t not living there.”

“Of course not. You were on the run. Well, you were ‘not living there’ just enough that I gave Ivy your room.’

“No you didn’t.” Ed’s statement was dismissive rather than outraged. Not an accusation; a fact. Confirming that he had evidence to back up his claim. 

“How do you know?” Oswald asked, curious. 

“Because when I went there in March, my room was as I left it.”

March. 

Two months before Sofia had been taken out for good.

When Riddler had broken him out of Arkham, the purple panel coat with the fur trimmed collar (flattened now and in desperate need of dry cleaning) had been slung across the passenger seat of the truck. The coat he had left in Ed’s apartment after Galavan’s murder, the coat he’d subsequently gotten back after the GCPD delivered the lot from the auction. He had been too preoccupied at the time to question its presence or how Ed might have retrieved it when Oswald himself had changed the locks a year earlier. 

“You broke into my house!”  
  
“It was hardly breaking in — the windows weren’t even locked,” he paused at Oswald’s shocked expression. “I never did it when you were home. Just after you were arrested and, later, when you were squatting at Falcone’s place.”

“Right, because that makes it better! What were you even doing there?”’

“Looking for my things, mainly. I wore the same suit for months and it wasn’t like I had a lot of loose change to throw around, even with Lee’s help.”  
  
“So you turned to house breaking. How clever of you.”

“One house. And I didn’t take anything that wasn’t already mine.”

‘Just as before.’ Oswald flinched at the thought, turned away. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, refrained from upturning the table with all of the bolts he’d sorted. One could afford to pick one’s battles during a long-form escape attempt. .

“Well you can go back for your precious record collection any time you like! If the front door is still on the hinges, I’ll even loan you my key.”

Said key disappeared from his keyring two days later, around the time Oswald found the library work space empty.

–  
  
He did not turn up to sort bolts, shuffle schematics or retrieve provisions for Edward the next day. 

Or the next day. 

He arranged trades. He drank wine on Barbara’s sofa. He listened to her talk through the physical transformations of her second trimester and Lee Thompkins’ warnings about high heels being a fall risk and, therefore, a risk to the fetus. 

“As if I would ever fall,” she scoffed. 

He refrained from stating the obvious (about churches and wedding dresses and months spent in a coma), pouring himself another glass to avoid grinding his teeth.

On the third day, he turned up to an empty room. He sat waiting in the empty library long into the evening. The sun was setting, filling the room with an orange glow when a member of his security team turned up, an anxious expression on their face. 

“Boss.”

“Where is he?”

–  
  
The First Bank of Gotham was a historic granite and lime building measuring half a city block bordering the north side's industrial sector. The Court of Owls had done a good job of hiding their dirty work in plain sight.

The alley where he and Edward had made their bloody escape two years earlier was on the edge of Firefly’s territory, frequently disputed by Fries’ minions staking a claim. The odds had been in Firefly’s favor recently and Bridgit, to Oswald’s surprise, allowed him to pass through with barely a nod of encouragement. 

“String Bean's in Building C. Entered through the southwest staircase. My scouts say he’s been there a while,” she lifted her mask, giving him a pointed stare. “You’ve got an hour, Pengy.”

Oswald nodded, leaving his guards under his former housemate’s watchful eye (and flamethrower). This was Firefly being sentimental. He knew it wouldn’t last long if they overstayed their welcome. 

There were more stairs than he remembered. Each floor opened onto a circular hall of doors with the door knobs either broken or missing, papers and files scattered, the mundane facade of an centuries-old evil organization that still needed three floors of pencil pushers to move their assets and occasionally serve as cannon fodder. Oswald remembered their holding cells being on the sixth floor, close to the roof. The trip to the ground level had been a whirlwind of improvised carnage – guards, personnel, people in uniforms, people in office wear, he and Ed and tore through everyone on their way out, before crashing onto the pavement outside, covered in the blood of violent rebirth.

He found Edward on the fourth floor, door ajar on what had once been a holding area, dilapidated desks and disabled security gates, loose wires where key panel locks had once been. Ed's long legs were folded into a too small office chair, eyes downcast. His friend’s visage brought a lump to Oswald's throat.

“Reliving old memories?” he asked, annoyed even as the fear and agony he’d been holding in check all day melted from him.

Ed didn’t look up.

“Edward?”

Another long moment passed before he finally spoke. 

“I found my overcoat,” he said, gesturing at the pile of green plaid slung over the crook of his arm and draped over his lap. Nearly two years in dark storage, no doubt covered in mildew, dust mites, and other unspeakable things. 

“Were you looking for that recently?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I hadn’t even thought about it, or this place in quite some time. I was looking for scrap steel for the outer panels, maybe some extra supplies. Once I realized where I was... Have I been gone long?”

“Six hours.” Eight, though Ed didn’t need to know just how early Oswald had turned up to the library.

“I couldn’t find any of your stuff. Or anything that looked like it might be yours. Sorry.”

Oswald did his best to contain his reaction, that Ed had done something thoughtful. For _his_ sake. He winced against the ripple of familiar warmth, butterflies. Things only Ed brought out in him. All things he could not afford in the midst of a long-form escape attempt.

“It doesn’t matter. Are you ready to go now?” 

Ed nodded, walking half a step behind as they descended back down the stairs.

–

“How long were you their prisoner?” He asked, after they had crossed the perimeter, doubling back twice to avoid whatever shadows Ed seemed positive were following them. The sun had long since set and what little light they had was from the security teams flanking them, throwing long shadows on the broken pavement.

“Before you arrived?” Ed shrugged. “A few weeks maybe? I was interrogated before they put me in the cage. It was difficult to keep track but not impossible. It wasn’t like Arkham – their objectives involved keeping me alive. Though what keeping me alive meant in a city they wanted to destroy is anybody’s guess.”

Probably holding his sage intellect in storage for future endeavors, as Barbara had. Oswald felt angry on his old friend’s behalf as well as himself. He hadn’t been interrogated – just sedated, stripped, and thrown in a cell. For the formerly missing mayor of the city, it was beyond insulting. 

Ed wasn’t finished.

“They gave me haloperidol so they could question me. That was bad. I was still detoxing at first – that was worse.”

“From what?”

“Amphetamines, mostly. And whatever psychotropics Tabitha gave me when she thought I wasn't looking. Withdrawal symptoms ideally shouldn’t last as long as those did. I tapered off to avoid complications with my heart muscle, adrenal glands…”

Oswald held his breath.

Following Riddler’s progress after his death had been difficult from the distance of Ivy’s colonial hideaway in Bludhaven. Even after returning home, tracking headlines and articles stopped at a certain date, bleeding into coverage of the mayor’s disappearance. One of those articles included a grainy shot of Ed leaving a press conference at city hall. His face was a mask of composure but for the downward cast of distressed brown eyes in rubbed gray newsprint.

He knew Ed had tripled his original kill count in less than two months. And that he’d kept the authorities on the run right up until Jim Gordon decided handing him over to a cabal with designs on child abduction and mass murder was the idea of the decade. That Ed himself had crossed that threshold virtually without a fight.

“…why?”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Uppers tends to do that–”

“I didn’t want to sleep,” his tone took on a sharp edge and he was glaring at Oswald again. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me. You know exactly how long I was there. You went to Jim first. You always go to him first.”

That jab… felt oddly personal. Oswald wondered what he was missing in that accusation— the narrowed gaze and the resentful pinch to his mouth. Never mind that Jim Gordon was the one who had arrested and subsequently reported the “Riddler’s” escape and Ed, a forensic investigator, should have known the importance of following clues.

“If I could gauge what Jim knew, I had a bead on what the rest of the GCPD knew and I could plan accordingly. So, yes, I went to him. And he lied to me and I knew it – just like I always know when he lies to me. The man has a terrible poker face.”

“So do you.”

“So _stop playing with me_ ,” he said, choking up. Having his own methods questioned was galling. And it wasn’t as though his talent for shallow subterfuge hadn’t fooled him once— back when Ed cared about him and a blind spot had been established. Memories that brought a salty weighty to the back of his throat and behind his eyes. “Did you even find out ‘who runs Gotham?’”

Flippant, almost cruel. Ed’s answer was not.

“That and more,” he replied, somber, almost pensive; just enough to deflate Oswald’s ire. 

“Well. Good for you, then.”

“There are things they told me,” he said, serious now, neither chiding nor angry. “…I can’t talk about it. Not yet.”

Oswald kept his eyes on the dark path ahead, tried not to think of what could be worse to talk about than his anguish over the deaths at Haven or the almost blissful oblivion of his first murders. A distant part of his brain reminded him that it could be still another play, but he had seen Ed devastated enough over time to recognize truth from fiction.

“Okay,” he nodded. 

“Things that involve you.”

“I understand. Save it if you want, Ed. You can tell me whenever you want to or hang onto it forever. I don’t care.”

The walk back to the library seemed longer than before. Oswald was surprised that Ed continued to shadow him even as the streets (what had once been streets) diverged and he headed in the direction of city hall.

“Don’t disappear again.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You’re not capable of scaring me!” Patently untrue and Ed knew it, too. “Anyway, I thought you might have gone to the manor.”

“I tried that first,” he replied, producing his keyring from the pocket on his boilersuit. “Yesterday.”

“And?”

“I want to say the front door is still on the hinges, but I couldn’t get more than a few yards away to look. Nature seems to have taken back a good portion of your father’s estate and… some of it was not happy to find me there.”

“Ivy. Well, it’s good to hear that she’s kept up her hobbies." Guilt was rare and pulsed dully in the same pained spot in his stomach where heartbreak loved to dwell. The teenage plant maven had kept Oswald company when he had wanted no one near him and he’d rewarded her generosity of spirit with contempt and vitriol. Forgiveness was, as ever, too high a price to ask for. He’d have to settle for just knowing she was alive. 

“Hang on to the key, anyway. We may need it eventually.”

If they ever went back (and if Ivy killed him on sight), Ed would still need to get inside the house.

—

After the bolts and the sonar, after Penn’s arrival and subsequent dispatch, aborted departures and new arrivals and scrambling to recover what they could from the bottom of the river, they managed to fight through the sentient vegetation and rehome the manor.

Oswald arrived with lunch one afternoon and found a 78rpm in a battered paper sleeve on the dining room table. He reached out to touch it, wondering briefly if it was a trick of his remaining eye.

“Ed?” he called out. 

“I found your record,” Ed said, closer than he’d initially guessed, initially in his blind spot and then moving over to his left side. No longer disputing ownership. “Not here. It turns out the library’s music archives weren’t completely depleted.”

Oswald smiled, turning the record over, noting the red label, the Columbia logo.

“Do we still have a working turntable?”

Ed smiled, amused, offered an arm to guide him.

“Back here.”

It took more than a few breaths to blow the dust off both record and player, more than a few minutes to turn the crank on his father’s old gramophone without overwinding, and finding the appropriate place to drop the needle. The voice that warbled out was familiar in a way that conjured images of his mother’s living room, frying onions in the kitchen, the sharp bite of paprika and heavy salt in the air… none of which echoed Ed’s place in his mind. 

“This isn’t Dinah Shore.”

“No, it’s Doris Day,” he replied, a hint of amusement breaking through what, no doubt, had to be a heavy sense of injustice (Ed’s impeccable brain turning on him yet again). “I got the title and the label right but the vocalist wrong. Such an obvious detail to miss.”

Oswald shook his head, reaching out to take his partner’s other arm, squeezing lightly.

“It’s an easy mistake,” he replied, his non-bandaged eye focused on his dearest friend’s shifting expression; dark eyes misty, a hint of a smile. “No worries, my friend.”

Oswald watched Ed swallow, feeling an answering squeeze on his arm. The two of them leaned against each other, swaying, almost in a dance. Humming in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Oswald sings is “Put ‘Em in a Box, Tie ‘Em With a Ribbon,” sung by Doris Day. Ed’s thinking of “Love That Boy” sung by Dinah Shore (and actually misremembers it with a lyric from “Mad About Him, Sad Without Him”). Both were released by Columbia in 1947, Doris is singing about taking romance and chucking it in the river, while Dinah is still in the bloom of loving someone from afar, alternately delighted and miserable.


End file.
